Austin Abortion Clinic Reopens After Supreme Court Ruling. Will Any More Follow?
Nearly one year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck two major provisions from Texas’ sweeping anti-abortion law, the clinic at the center of the case is emerging from what its staff call the “Age of Uncertainty.”
Whole Woman’s Health will reopen its Austin clinic to patients this week for the first time in three years — the second to do so since Texas’ House Bill 2 forced more than half the abortion clinics in the state to close. The only other to reopen, Northpark Medical Group in Dallas, quietly began seeing patients in February. A Planned Parenthood clinic in Waco obtained a state license but hasn’t resumed services.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that two core provisions of the 2013 law — a requirement that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and another that facilities meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers — created an undue burden on abortion access. Despite ongoing legal challenges, the admitting privileges requirement was allowed to continue nearly uninterrupted until the Court deemed it unconstitutional three years later.
The 2016 decision stopped other states from pushing forward similar legislation, but in Texas, the damage was already done. About two dozen of the state’s 44 abortion clinics closed their doors since fall 2013.
Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-abortion-clinic-reopens-supreme-court-ruling-will-any-more-follow/
